Tom laughed. The fire parted the cloud.
“What is the world but just such unending discord? Look at the world. Is it a sweet harmonious place? The one harmony it knows is an infinite texture of just such deathless conflicts, of just such tragic sacrifice of individual lives to its cruel rhythms.”
David was silent. Tom, the barer of life, was once more before him. He felt that Tom might well be true in his words. He had not altogether left the road of his Dream.
Tom went on. He had been silent and distant. He had made, for a long time, no advances to David. He had left him alone. Now in the silence of David, he saw his old art upon him, caught the flare of that past when he had taught and given and David had received. He had no power against this haunting past which he loved. He went forward to recapture it. Blindly he went like an insect toward a fire.
“David,” he spoke with an incomprehensible passion that shriveled his face, “David, I would rather see you married to a whore—than to a woman who is beautiful and strong.”
Already he was afraid, burned perhaps. He swerved away. “...Though it broke your heart, it would be less dangerous. You would escape. Comfort and happiness alone, you will be helpless against.”
He stopped. He looked at David. He saw how different this was which had happened after his words, from what had always happened. David was calm. He was away. Tom had lost him....
David went on with his visits to Helen Daindrie.
He found he was telling her all the little things that filled his days and nights—the little nothings.
“I don’t know where I walked,” he said. “It was very noisy, I know. But it all seemed so quiet. There was a silence in the men and women.... It seemed as if there was a silence in them, and they were scurrying about so fast to get away from it.... But the silence clung.”